Cell Phone magazine

If you are concerned with the sound quality of your mobile phone you should be concerned with Sony Ericsson. It is a joint venture established on October 1, 2001 by the Japanese consumer electronics company Sony Corporation and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson to make mobile phones. The stated reason for this venture is to combine Sony’s consumer electronics expertise with Ericsson’s technological leadership in the communications sector. Both companies have stopped making their own mobile phones.

The company’s global management is based in Hammersmith, London, and it has research & development teams in Sweden, Japan, China, Germany, the United States, India and the United Kingdom. By 2008, it was the third-largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world after Nokia andSamsung. The sales of products largely increased due to the launch of the adaptation of Sony’s popular Walkman and Cyber-shot series.

In the United States, Ericsson partnered with General Electric in the early nineties, primarily to establish a US presence and brand recognition.

Ericsson had decided to obtain chips for its phones from a single source — a Philips facility in New Mexico. In March 2000, a fire at the Philips factory contaminated the sterile facility. Philips assured Ericsson and Nokia (their other major customer) that production would be delayed for no more than a week. When it became clear that production would actually be compromised for months, Ericsson was faced with a serious shortage. Nokia had already begun to obtain parts from alternative sources, but Ericsson’s position was much worse as production of current models and the launch of new ones was held up.

Ericsson, which had been in the cellular phone market for decades, and was the world’s no. 3 cellular telephone handset maker, was struggling with huge losses — in spite of booming sales since 2000 — due to this fire, and its inability to produce cheaper phones like Nokia. To curtail the losses, it considered outsourcing production to Asian companies that can produce the handset for lower costs.

Speculation began about a possible sale by Ericsson of its mobile phone division, but the company’s president said they had no plans to do that. “Mobile phones are really a core business for Ericsson. We wouldn’t be as successful (in networks) if we didn’t have phones”, he said.

In June 2002, Sony Ericsson said it will stop making CDMA cellphones for the US market and will focus on GSM which was and remains the dominant technology. It also slashed jobs in research and development in USA and Germany. In October 2003, it posted its first quarterly profit but warned that falling prices on phones and competition would make it difficult to stay in black. Sony Ericsson’s recovery is credited to the success of the T610 model.

Following the success of its P800 phone, Sony Ericsson introduced the P900 at simultaneous events in Las Vegas and Beijing in October 2003. It was pegged as smaller, faster, simpler and more flexible than its predecessor.

In March 2004, Ericsson said it would try to block its rival Nokia from gaining control of Symbian, an industry consortium that made operating software for smart phones.

In 2004, Sony Ericsson’s market share increased from 5.6 percent in the first quarter to 7 percent in the second quarter. In July 2004, Sony Ericsson unveiled the P910 communicator with its integrated thumbboard, broad e-mail support, quadruple memory and improved screen.

In February 2005, Sony Ericsson president Miles Flint announced at the 3GSM World Congress that Sony Ericsson will unveil a mobile phone-come-digital music player in the next month. It would be called the Walkman phone and would play music file formats such as MP3 and AAC.

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